1. Make your own blossom.Take your offspring walking in your local wood. Pick up thin sticks to bring home. Preferably without beating a sister around the head with them in the back of the car.

If we come home safely and everyone's in good humour, then we can destroy it all by asking the kids to do something pointless, like twisting crumpled up balls of pink, white and red crepe paper round the little twigs. Because look! You made blossom!

Because the mood is now turning ugly, stick the twigs in a vase and call it Spring Art. If you count the number of crepe balls on the twigs, call it Maths. If you count the number of crepe balls littering the floor, and add it, subtract, divide or multiply with the number on the twigs, brilliant. Advanced Maths.

2. Lambing.Not the bloody visit to see cute little lambs again. You can't take an ex-vegan to a farm without complaints. Let's make lambs fly instead.

Attach paper wings to your lamb. Throw it out the bedroom window. Measure how far the lamb can fly. You can try timing the seconds before it hits the ground.

He says he likes to fly and he wants to go.Even if his wings do keep falling off.

Build bigger wings. And fix them on properly this time. Make them of different materials. Like bamboo skewers and nylon. Off he goes! Measure the distance. Did the wings make any difference to flight direction? Distance? Speed? Time to impact? Is the weight or density of lamb causing a problem here? Has anyone got a smaller lamb?

Attach a selection of plastic bags, large and small. Keep throwing. Record the results.

After a couple of hours of cheap entertainment, create some theories as to why lambs don't have wings then call it Science.

3. Falala. Music! Put on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or Vivaldi's Spring from The Four Seasons. Dress up and dance along but try not to dance yourself to death.

What did you feel and hear? Dawn? Angry weather? Evening? Birds? Tractors? Flying lambs? The sound of a sister crashing to the floor when you pushed her over by accident on purpose?

4. Visit a sensory garden.These are all over the place, so if you can't make Kew, there could be one near you. Round here there's Luton's Stockwood Park, with sensory area and garden exhibits.

You can always make your own garden sensation, even on a windowsill. Go off to the garden centre and see what they have. If you are too mean to actually buy any of the plants (and I do not blame you, having been a person that spent £3,000 on a garden only to see it systematically trashed by small people) then just let the tiddlers run around the garden centre. At the sound of smashed terracotta claim the kids are not yours and you have never seen them before.

Set your kids a challenge wherever you are to find plants that are smelly, prickly, hairy, noisy, sad, droopy, bold, dead. Call this Science. And if you come home and write a poem about the experience, English. If you can persuade Tinkertop to call her poem le jardin, you get to call it French.

One year we had a party called Yellow. We painted the garden tree with yellow paint, hung yellow decorations in it, blew up yellow balloons, ate yellow iced cake, wore yellow, and made paper daffodils and stuck them in the ground. It hasn't caught on, but you never know.

6. Be inspired by paint. Off to the library for paintings research before getting out the paintbrushes and going berserk.

Berry's Book of Hours does nicely whatever the month, and you can tick Art again. And History. Or there's Arcimboldo and his Spring face, which means you can compose your own self-portraits using only flowers you hand-picked from granny's garden when she was at the shops. When she comes home, you can call it moral discussion.

7. Set up your weather station.Stick up a dozen cheap thermometers over the house and garden, and take daily readings, if you can remember. Take the temperature of the soil in evening or deep shade and after a day of sunshine, if we get any sunshine. Any difference? More Science.

8. We're all going to die with global warming.Perhaps not expressed quite like this if you have a three year old. Half an hour with the newspapers or radio these days and you'll know in the UK that Spring is late and we're all doomed. This may well raise some interesting discussions about ecosystems you can have with a four year old. Or not, in which you can wipe your brow in relief and get out the Lego instead.

Two daughters are now at 6th form for A-levels, and one is mucking about in a college playing with clay, paint and wax. Mostly, it's all about culture clash.If you are looking for primary, try the archives under 2011 or 2012. Ideas? Try Seven days with elephants.

Secondary home ed? Try 2012 or 2014 through to 2016.

Exams made life boring for us all and the blog stopped for long periods so the home educated could concentrate on enjoying some teens.

Here I am

When we reach the end of the road we discover the beginning of the field.
Parent, educator, thinker, doer, prevaricator, writer, maker, messer-upper, consensus-seeker, polemic, conflict-avoider, conflict-seeker, vegetarian, leather fondler, shouty person, 'don't-pick-fights-with-me, mister', book dipper, theatre-goer, watcher of films, and person who has unruly thoughts, generally. Prefer the imaginative world where everything is under my control.

where is everybody?

This blog is a record of a home educationwrit for parents thinking about home edwrit for the LA who need an education about home edwrit for Grit's friends and relations who drop in once a yearand writ for Grit's sane and lovely mind.

The internal DCSF Consultation Report, made public 23 January. (pdf)In Annex A, 94% of respondents disagreed that the local authority should have the power to interview a home educated child alone.When this comes out Ed Balls' mouth in the Second Reading Debate, 94% against turns to:'The vast majority of parents would be happy to let that happen'(Hansard 11.01.10, Children, Schools and Families Bill, col 437.)

Love it or loathe it? The petition still broke a record.Press release in the Mirror, Channel4 news, the Guardian.

'Even if you don't currently see yourself home educating, you never know what the future might hold, and if a time comes when you find yourself needing to pull your child out of school, I hope the option is still available to you, and you don't regret thinking *it's nothing to do with me*.'

Read the Right to Reply'Home educators are renowned for their strong opinions and independent spirit. They come from all faiths and none. They have as many approaches to education as there are children. They rarely agree on anything. And yet they are remarkably united in their opposition to these proposals. There is great concern that their way of life will be legislated out of existence.'--Response to the Badman Review of Elective Home Education in England and reaction to the Select Committee hearing.

The problem with home educators is that they are impossible to define. The only things that links them is respect for their children. And did the state just stagger foolishly across that line?Are we sandal wearing tree huggers who let our kids run wild or control mad Jesus freaks who don't want them learning about sex and evolution? Are we hot housing or leaving them to watch TV and play computer games all day? -Firebird.The UK government suggested that we home educate our children to cover up our abuse.On that issue, would you like some statistics?

'The Department [for Children, Schools and Families] is aware that attempts are being made on the Internet to vilify and harass the author of the review. It is the Department's view that, whilst dealing with each request on its merits, this situation will have to be taken into account in dealing with any relevant FOI requests. ... we anticipate the need to consider whether it is in the public interest to release information likely to intensify any such campaign, or to lead to harassment or distress to individuals.'Hello DCSF. Vilify: to make vicious and defamatory statements about.Like putting it about that home educated children are abused by their parents? Isolated? Unsocialised? Denied an education?And the latest one, that their mothers have Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy, and benefit from their child's suffering.

... compulsory registration, entry to the home, inspection according to external standards, and power to see the child without the parent present.By implication this applies to anyone who has their child at home with them: particularly parents with under 5s, but also those with school-aged children who are at home in the evenings, over the weekends, and throughout the summer holidays. Think on: the possibility of parental inspection, with or without your presence, based on the very human whim of a local authority officer.Is that okay with you?Renegade Parent on the implications for all parents from the Badman review of home education.

'Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children'.(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 26.3)

Photos and text copyright Grit.This is Grit's blog. The pictures come from her broken phone camera, and they are hers by right.

The words too are Grit's, Grit's, all Grit's. This is not to say you cannot use any words that Grit uses - after all, she is the unhinged woman who once banned SOIL - but you just cannot lift them in the long, complex and lovely arrangements, like the ones Grit has writ.

Please ask! If you wish to take images from this site, please send an email to gritsday@gmail.com

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